98 BRITISH BIRDS. 



duties that the bird wanders out of its favourite haunts and visits more 

 pastoral scenes. Then it is sometimes seen sailing proudly over the Low- 

 lands, and, more rarely still, gets as far south as England and Wales ; 

 although there is no room to doubt that by far the greater number of 

 Eagles reported to have been seen in this country are nothing but the far 

 commoner Sea-Eagle, Haliaetus albicilla. 



You may cage the proud king of birds, you may confine him in mena- 

 geries, and observe him there ; but to gain an insight into his nature you 

 must see him in his haunts, where his eagle soul is unfettered, and where 

 he can roam the mountain-tops at will. Far away from man's busy haunts, 

 on the brown heathery hills of the north, you must seek him, where nature 

 and her wildest scenery is yet unchanged, and the wilderness is wrapt in 

 an endless solitude. See him perched on yonder grey pinnacle of rock 

 overhanging one of the ravines of the snow-capped Cullins, and watching 

 the blue hares sport amongst the rocks or see him soaring in boundless 

 freedom over the peaks of Rum and Canna, or hastening across the clear 

 blue waters of the Minch to his nest and mate in the hoary fastnesses of 

 Glen Brittle then you see the Eagle as he is at home, free as the tempest, 

 and the monarch of the wilds. 



Most certainly the Golden Eagle, when he lives where game is scarce, is 

 a pest truly, indeed, "the pride and the pest of the parish," aye, and of 

 the whole country-side as well. The Golden Eagle has been known, on one 

 Highland sheep-farm alone, in the course of a single season, to carry off 

 as many as thirty-five lambs. Probably the amount is underestimated ; 

 for on such immense tracts of country as the Highland sheep-farms 

 it is impossible to tell how many lambs are really taken. It is in 

 these districts, where game is scarce, that the Golden Eagle does so much 

 harm ; and it is scarcely to be expected that sheep-farmers will put up 

 with the questionable pleasure of having the bird for a neighbour at such 

 an expense of live stock. But in other districts the Golden Eagle 

 is comparatively a harmless bird. In deer-forests Eagles are of the 

 greatest service ; for although they sometimes take a sickly deer-calf, they 

 live almost entirely on the blue hares, so troublesome to the deer-stalker ; 

 and most certainly the deer are the better: for the removal of the weak and 

 sickly ones, which would only possibly live to transmit their diseases to 

 posterity. The Golden Eagle strikes his prey, if it be a lamb, behind the 

 head, and, as a rule, carries it off at once to the nest, if the bird be bur- 

 dened with family cares, or to some wild secluded place where he can con- 

 sume it in peace. But lambs are not the Golden Eagle's only food. High 

 up among the mountains, almost in a region of perpetual snow, the blue 

 hare lives ; and this interesting little animal forms his favourite prey. This 

 hare, like the Ptarmigan and the stoat, changes its summer dress for one 

 of purest whiteness when the winter- commences this change doubtless 



